The 6 Best WordPress Front End Editing Plugins

A big reason for WordPress’ popularity is its easy-to-use administration interface. However, for some users (especially non-technical people), creating posts and pages using the WordPress dashboard can be overwhelming.

Fortunately, there are plenty of WordPress front end plugins available, offering those with less technical knowledge a way to create content and customize layouts without ever touching the WordPress back end.

In this post, we’ll look at six plugins – three for layout & content editing, three dealing strictly with content editing – and give you the pros and cons of each. By the end, you’ll have a solid idea on which plugins are right for you. Let’s get started!

Front End Page Layout Plugins

Front end page layout plugins give you full control over your website design. While you can use them to add and edit content, they also enable you to add layout elements such as rows and columns, as well as other content elements, like sliders. Let’s take a look at three of the front runners.

Visual Composer from WP Bakery is probably one of the most well known page builder plugins for WordPress. With over 165,000 sales and a 4.72-star rating, it’s very popular indeed. For just $34, you can add this powerful plugin to your website. Or you could consider a premium theme that includes the Visual Composer. Some themes, like the Total WordPress theme, include addition page element modules & customizations as a part of their bundle giving you even more building options.

Switching between Visual Composer’s back end and front end editors is easy – just click to change grid layouts, add rows and columns, then drag content elements on to the page, rearranging them as needed. All elements also have multiple options and variations to customize your page’s look and functionality.

Key Features

Pros: Easy to use, Live preview, Compatible with most WordPress themes

Cons: Adds shortcodes to pages

2. MotoPress Content Editor (Free)

The free MotoPress Content Editor enables you to build websites visually by dragging and dropping content elements. Used on over 10,000 websites, the plugin has a 4.8-star satisfaction rating, making this worthy of your consideration. There’s also a premium version of the plugin available, which adds additional content elements and premium support.

While MotoPress Content Editor is very easy to use, the plugin will only work with newly created pages, rather than your existing content. You can learn even more about this plugin in our MotoPress builder features review guide.

Key Features

Over 30 drag-and-drop content elements

Extensible through add-ons

Prebuilt layouts

Pros: Very easy to use, Live previews available, Free

Cons: Does not work with existing content

3. Live Composer (Free)

Live Composer is a front end page builder with drag-and-drop editing. It is used on over 10,000 websites and has a 4.8-star satisfaction rating, making it well worth checking out.

You enable the editor by clicking the green Activate Editor button on your page, which then lets you drag and drop elements on to the page. All in all, it’s simple to use, and all elements can be fully customized in terms of both styling and functionality.

Key Features

Over 30 drag-and-drop content elements

Import and export sections or layouts

Pros: Easy to use, Live preview, Free, No shortcodes are used to create elements

Cons: Cannot be used with existing content, Adds custom post types on installation

Front End Content Editing Plugins

While the previous selection of plugins allow you to edit your content and your layouts, front end content editing plugins are a bit more limited. Simply put, these plugins enable users to update the text, images, and other content of your posts and pages without utilizing the WordPress dashboard. Let’s take a look at three of the best out there.

1. Editus (formerly Lasso) ($99)

Editus was originally known as Lasso, and comes to us from the folks behind the Aesop Story Engine (ASE). It’s a front end editor that enables you to view your changes in real time. Starting at $99 for use on up to three sites, Editus is a powerful tool.

Using Editus is simple, and is accessed with one click from a small toolbar displayed over your posts and pages. From there, selecting the relevant content displays a formatting toolbar for further editing.

Key Features

Pros: Easy-to-use interface, Can be extended through ASE add-ons, Compatible with most themes

Cons: Relatively expensive

2. Front-end Editor (Free)

Formatting text is easy with the Front-End Editor plugin.

The Front-end Editor was originally developed as a feature plugin for possible inclusion in WordPress core. While that no longer seems to be the plan, the plugin is still available for use – at last count, there were over 2,000 installations, with a 4.2-star satisfaction rating.

Front-end Editor is simple to use, with zero configuration needed after installation. Once activated, a user with edit permissions visiting any post or page on your website can use both the Edit Page link in the toolbar at the top of the screen, and an Edit link below the content to enable editing.

Key Features

Real-time editing of text and links

Featured image support

Works on both posts and pages

Pros: Easy to use interface, Free

Cons: Limited functionality (e.g. you can’t edit images), Does not work with all themes

3. Frontier Post (Free)

Frontier Post is a free plugin designed to enable full post management from the front end of your website. It goes beyond just editing post content, enabling users with the right permissions to also create and delete posts. The plugin is currently being used on over 2,000 active websites and has a 4.9-star satisfaction rating.

Using the plugin, admins can control how and when posts are edited, as well as what options are available to users on the front end. Additionally, you have complete control over Frontier Post’s user permissions. The standard Edit links bring up the Frontier interface, which is a text editor similar to the WordPress TinyMCE editor. You can also preview your post before publishing.

Key Features

Ability to edit text, links, images, and more

Featured image support

Works on posts, pages, and custom post types

Ability to add categories and tags

Pros: Familiar WordPress editor interface, Configurable, Free

Cons: No live preview

Conclusion

While the WordPress administration interface is designed to be simple to use, many non-technical users still find it complicated. Using plugins that enable users to create and edit site content from the front end – rather than the WordPress dashboard – simplifies the process and cuts down the strain for those navigating around an unfamiliar environment.

I would love to know of a way to create posts from forms. Formidable Pro will do it, but ties it to their own db structure. I need to have a way to take form content and script it into various post types. I cannot seem to find anything that can accomplish this, but really need it.

Funny thing is we have a developer's license of Gravity, too. We moved away from Gravity a year or so ago because of a feature need and because Formidable looked so much better at the time. Just ran across that they can now create posts. I sure wish I could take the best attributes of Gravity and Formidable and put together into a single plug-in. Tired of going back and forth.
Thank you again for the confirmation.